With the exploding popularity of gaming, there are more free games than you could possibly download in your lifetime, let alone play. Getting the latest and most hyped games for free is more difficult, but often doable if you're willing to put in some effort. On the other hand, once you're playing through a backlog of now-free hits from the distant past of 2012, you might decide to hold off on the latest $60 release until it's dropped in price, and been reviewed a few times.

Steps

Method1

Getting Recent Popular Games for Free

1

Sign up for a free Gamefly trial. Described as "the Netflix for games," Gamefly is a subscription service that offers a free one month trial. Visit gamefly.com and click start your free trial. During this time, you'll be able to rent one game at a time. Mail the game back to Gamefly (or purchase it at a discount) and you'll be able to order a replacement as long as your free trial month is still active.

Make sure to cancel your membership before the month is up, or you will be charged for the next month of the service.

You can browse the site before signing up to make sure the games you want to play are there.

2

Earn GameStop rewards. GameStop's reward program lets you purchase games using points instead of money. It's intended for people who spend money at GameStop, but there are ways to slowly earn points without spending money. Here's how to do it:

First, visit a GameStop store (find one here) and sign up for the free rewards program.[1]

Register your rewards card at the Power Up Rewards site and earn some free points by filling out your information.

Make an account on Kongregate.com and link it to your rewards account for more free points. Each day you can get more points by earning the chosen "Badge of the Day" in a selected Flash game.

3

Take advantage of game store offers. Most brick-and-mortar game stores have a couple ways to get games at free, or at least discounted prices:

Trade in your used games for store credit.

Purchase a game, play it, and return it within the allowed time limit for a full refund. (Warning: you may be banned from the store if you make this a habit.)[2]

4

Join a freebie site. If you are willing to go through membership sign-ups and/or referring friends to the site, you can earn free games or even consoles and computers using these freebie sites. Try YourFree360Games, Git-R-Free, or ZipNadaZilch.

If you can't get friends and family to sign up as referrals, try searching for people on sites such as referralswapper.com.

5

Be cautious when using freebie affiliates. Keep in mind that these sites are profit-making enterprises, and exist in order to advertise and get you to spend money. You should always take these precautions when interacting with the affiliate companies the freebie sites direct you to:

Create a new email account using a free email service such as Gmail. Use only this email address when signing up for affiliate memberships, and expect to receive spam messages.

When signing up for memberships with affiliate companies, read all the fine print. Sure, it's incredibly boring, but you don't want to be caught with surprise fees you didn't know about.

If you are asked to enter your credit card information, make absolutely certain you know how to cancel your membership, and when you're able to do so. If you forget to cancel your membership, you will be automatically billed for a month of non-trial membership.

6

Trade with other gamers. Sites such as 99gamers and GameTZ connect gamers who want to exchange games with each other for free, while LeapTrade gives you trade-in credits based on the retail price of your game. If you prefer earning credit at big retailers, BestBuy, Walmart, and Amazon typically provide the best value and game selection, while GameStop and Target give a bit less bang for your buck.[3]

If you have gamer friends, and you're more into single-player games, consider splitting the cost of a new game and taking turns playing. Alternatively, you can each purchase a game, then trade with each other once you've played through them.

Method2

Finding Other Free Games

1

Find free-to-play games. There are thousands of free games out there, and this category goes way beyond app stores. Both major developers and independent studios have been exploring the free-to-play model. Keep searching, and you may find a favorite game that matches your interests without trying to nickel and dime you to death.

Some of the most famous free games include the battle arena League of Legends, the collectible card game Hearthstone, the first-person shooter Team Fortress 2, and the Diablo-like Path of Exile.

2

Play an MMO. These technically fall into the free-to-play category, but there are so many of these they deserve a separate mention. If you are at all interested in online role-playing games, there's probably something out there you can spend hundreds of hours on for free. From Lord of the Rings Online to Star Wars: The Old Republic to the first twenty levels of World of Warcraft, you have many options available.[4]

3

Play completely free games. Unlike free-to-play games, these don't even have an obnoxious message trying to convince you to purchase in-game perks. It's almost the default now for games to become free eventually, although you may have to wait a few years after the release date. Browse huge collections of these games at the following sites:

Get the current free PC game at Origin. EA's Origin game store client might be a little desperate for users. Visit their ongoing promotions and download the free Origin software. Check back regularly to see which games are up for grabs, as these rotate frequently:

The "On the House" promotion offers a full, free game with no strings attached. The game is typically a few years old, but that doesn't mean it's not fun.

There are often several "Game Time" promotions running at once. These are also full games, but each one gives you a limited amount of time to play. This is great for trying out a game you're interested in, but not so much if you want to play through the whole thing.

5

Visit sites like Humble Bundle. The most famous and generous promotions in the indie game world come from Humble Bundle.[6] With multiple "bundles" of games available each week and a "pay what you want" price tag for most of the games on offer, it's hard to find better value. If you truly need it to be free, pay one cent for every dozen games and visit the "take a penny" at the grocery store.